After a few years spent helping his father make a living as a gardener, Yukio passed the civil service exam. For the next three decades, he worked for the federal government, becoming a civilian computer analyst for the U.S. Navy. Life was good, especially after he met Mitsuko at a Young Buddhist Association dance in 1955. They married three years later.

Neither Kawamoto has bad memories of camp. But they believe those years took a toll on their parents.

“As far as families were concerned, especially kids my age — we never spent time with our parents,” Yukio said. “I didn’t do anything bad, but I never felt they were strong authorities, like they were before the war. It definitely undermined their authority.”

Their parents, though, never complained — and neither did their adult children. At home, Yukio and Mitsuko rarely mentioned World War II or the internment camps to their three sons.

“And there wasn’t a whole lot of Japanese culture in our home,” said Jon Kawamoto, 51, now a biotech executive in Northern California. “I think they were influenced by the internment camp experience to downplay their Japanese-American culture and experience.”

Slowly, though, that changed. After he retired in 1980, Yukio volunteered at the Buddhist Temple of San Diego and the Japanese American Historical Society. The couple’s living room now includes Japanese artwork, and both husband and wife speak at schools and universities. Students are often baffled by their accounts. Why did Washington force these Americans into exile?

The Kawamotos are puzzled, too.

“There’s nothing in the Constitution that says during wartime all civil liberties are suspended,” Yukio said. “Yet that’s what happened to us.”